…a South American vine made into a hallucinogenic beverage used for indigenous religious ceremonies…
church in Florida is facing criminal charges over accusations he randomly sucker punched a sleeping passenger during a flight from California to Washington, D.C., beating the fellow traveler — for no apparent reason — until the cabin was speckled with blood, according to a federal complaint filed Tuesday.
About two hours into the five-hour journey on Monday aboard United Airlines flight 2247 from San Francisco to Dulles, Everett Chad Nelson,
…not an indigenous South American name, which along with his appearance suggests he is a professional cultural appropriator as well as vicious…
44, left his seat in the rear of the aircraft and headed to one of the lavatories up front, the complaint states.
When Nelson exited the bathroom, he stopped at seat 12F and “without notice, began physically attacking a sleeping male passenger by punching him repeatedly in the face and head until blood was drawn,” the complaint alleges, adding that the assault continued for a full minute. The man began screaming, after which a Good Samaritan intervened and managed to pull Nelson off of him, according to the complaint.
Aside from giving the unidentified passenger two black eyes, Nelson opened up a gash on the man’s nose, spattering blood on his seat, the wall, the window, and the sleeves of Nelson’s green windbreaker, the complaint goes on. It provides no motive, does not say the two had a preexisting relationship of any kind, and reads as if the pummeling came completely out of nowhere.
“Nelson had no observable injuries and there was no indication that [the alleged victim] struck him in defense,” the complaint states.
Following the shocking beatdown, the complaint says flight attendants moved Nelson to a seat up front, where the person who stepped in was able to keep an eye on him for the remainder of the flight. Numerous other passengers witnessed the beatdown, and the victim was treated for his injuries by a doctor who happened to be onboard, the complaint continues.
The victim was deaf and non-verbal, according to one passenger who saw the vicious beatdown.
That sounds ominous…
Nelson, a Virginia native, grew up in a “strict independent fundamentalist Bible-believing Baptist family,” according to a speaker’s bio from a 2022 conference for investors in the psychedelics industry. On track to become a missionary, Nelson instead earned a degree in computer engineering from George Mason University in Virginia and worked on drone aircraft beginning in 2004. He got married and things were fine for a while – until “[r]ejection of God and everything spiritual eventually led to my life falling apart.”
“Ayahuasca plus open-minded spiritual study saved my life,” Nelson said in his bio. “It showed me that sharing my gifts is my path with heart. I am now forming an Ayahuasca Church in Southern Florida. We have a grand vision to build a sacred temple in the shape of an elven star. We also want to purchase land in natural settings for conservation, sacred ceremony, and growing the medicine.”
Nelson is charged with one count of assault by beating, striking, and wounding in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States. His trial date has been set for December 11. If convicted, Nelson faces a year behind bars.
Cadence Mertz, a public defender assigned to Nelson’s case, did not respond to The Independent’s request for comment.
[APNEWS] A Washington state man accused of leading a wildlife trafficking ring on a Native American reservation that killed thousands of eagles and hawks to sell on the black market was sentenced Thursday to nearly four years in prison.
The trafficking ring operated for years on the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwest Montana, exploiting high demand among tribal members for feathers and other bird parts that are used in powwows and sacred ceremonies.
The defendant and others killed at least 118 eagles, 107 hawks and as many as 3,600 birds overall, prosecutors said. Almost as much as a Wind Turbine farm!
Juvenile golden eagles in particular were targeted because their black and white feathers are highly desired among Native Americans, officials said.
The poaching operation centered on the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana, which researchers say has some of the highest concentrations of eagles and other birds of prey in the U.S. Members of the trafficking ring would set out carcasses of elk, calves and deer, and then shoot eagles that came to feed on them, officials said.
They would also shoot hawks opportunistically off of power poles and other perches.
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[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Two people have been killed and six injured after a gunman opened fire in Orlando while thousands of people were out celebrating Halloween.
A 17-year-old suspect, Jaylen Dwayne Edgar, has been arrested after gunshots were heard in two different locations and he was tackled by police, according to police Chief Eric Smith.
Edgar was previously arrested for grand theft in 2023.
'He pretty much walked into downtown, walked into the street and did what he did,' Chief Smith said, adding that the teen suspect did not walk into any clubs.
Horrifying video shows hundreds of people running for their lives after gunshots were heard in the downtown area of the city.
The dead have not been named but are a 25-year-old black male and a white male aged 19, Orlando Police have said.
The other victims are a white male aged 18 who was shot in the lower leg, a white female aged 39 shot in the left land, a 24-year-old Hispanic female shot in the left leg, a black male aged 20 with a bullet graze to the head, a Hispanic male, 26, shot in the right foot, a 19-year-old Hispanic female shot in the upper back and a 26-year-old Hispanic female who was trampled but not shot.
The other victims are a white male aged 18 who was shot in the lower leg, a white female aged 39 shot in the left land, a 24-year-old Hispanic female shot in the left leg, a black male aged 20 with a bullet graze to the head, a Hispanic male, 26, shot in the right foot, a 19-year-old Hispanic female shot in the upper back and a 26-year-old Hispanic female who was trampled but not shot.
The individuals injured are in stable, pH balanced condition, police added.
Young people - many wearing Halloween costumes - had been out partying Thursday night in the area before the horror unfolded.
An emergency call came in just after 1am, with reports that several people had been shot around Central Boulevard and Orange Avenue, according to the Orlando Police Department.
A second call came in from out of Washington Street and Orange Avenue, Smith said.
Police had already been present at the scene and ran towards the gunfire, Smith said, allowing the suspect to be arrested quickly.
'Shortly after reported shots fired, a shooting suspect was located and taken into custody at Washington and Orange,' Smith said in his briefing this morning.
Officials said they are considering charging the suspect as an adult.
They are looking into a motive for the shooting.
Anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000 people are believed to have been downtown at the time of the shooting, judging by views of the huge Halloween crowds, Smith said.
#4
There’s an awful lot of grooming that went into that hair, that mustache, and that beginning beard. I’m not sure what he’s thinking in terms of those eyebrows, though.
[Behind The Black] According to a report from Bloomberg news today, Boeing has now dismantled its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) division, with its head leaving the company.
Staff from Boeing’s DEI office will be combined with another human resources team focused on talent and employee experience, according to people familiar with the matter. Sara Liang Bowen, a Boeing vice president who led the now-defunct department, left the company on Thursday. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted phrase above tells us all we need to know. The focus under Boeing’s new CEO Kelly Ortberg will be "talent and employee experience," not skin color or gender.
Bowen wrote the following in announcing her dismissal:
It has been the privilege of my lifetime to lead Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the Boeing company these past 5+ years. Our team strived every day to support the evolving brilliance and creativity of our workforce. The team achieved so much — sometimes imperfectly, never easily — and dreamed of doing much more still. [emphasis mine]
As far as I can tell, all that Bowen accomplished was to destroy the reputation of Boeing as a quality manufacturer of aerospace products. Instead, it became a place which hired people based on their race, and didn’t care if they knew the difference between a screwdriver and a forklift. The screen capture to the right comes from the company’s 2024 Boeing Sustainability & Social Impact Report [pdf], which is still online, as is the webpage of Boeing’s DEI division. Both still tout the racist quota goals of this DEI department that forced the company to consider race and gender above talent and experience in its hiring. Hopefully that ugliness will vanish soon as well.
Meanwhile, Boeing union employees on the west coast are about to vote on a third contract proposal, having rejected the previous two and going on strike since mid-September. I suspect the decision above to get rid of this poisonous DEI department will sit well with those union employees, and likely help to encourage them to approve the plan.
#7
#1 ...What this tells me is that DEI may have had a lot more to do with the problems at Boeing than anybody was letting on.
Mike
You have no idea how on the money you are. Everyone just got a quarterly review so we will see how the new outsider CEO swings the ax. At least 17,000 will head out the door starting November 17.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] A flurry of earthquakes have rattled California's Death Valley, raising concerns that a bigger more devastating one could be imminent.
Since October 9, 130 quakes have struck the National Park, according to USGS geophysicist Elizabeth Cochran.
The largest ones occurred on October 25, clocking in at magnitudes 4.7 and 4.5.
The spate of tremors has not caused any damage in the park or to nearby towns and cities but the shaking has been felt 150miles away in Las Vegas.
The park's fault system is known for its intense seismic activity, producing earthquakes up to magnitude 7.
This cluster of earthquakes, considered a 'swarm', aren't necessarily unusual, but experts have raised concerns that this uptick in activity could mean a bigger quake is coming.
'That level of shaking is something we carefully monitor, as it could significantly impact the Las Vegas valley,' Christie Rowe, Director of the Nevada Seismological Lab at the University of Nevada, Reno, told KTNV Las Vegas.
Earthquake clusters are common in Nevada, but 'they do increase our alert levels because sometimes a larger earthquake follows,' Rowe said.
And when one cluster dies down, another usually isn't far behind, she said, explaining that this pattern of activity tends to continue along the California-Nevada border or on central Nevada.
Death Valley has a history of producing major earthquakes.
In 2019, a magnitude 7.1 tremblor struck an area just 30 miles away from this current swarm, leaving a deep crack in the ground near Ridgecrest, California, that has since become a local tourist attraction.
Three main fault lines run through Death Valley: the Northern Death Valley Fault Zone (NDVFZ), the Black Mountains Fault Zone (BMFZ), and the Southern Death Valley Fault Zone (SDVFZ).
These two states see the second and fourth most earthquakes in the US annually.
Earthquake clusters in California often spark fears of The Big One - a hypothetical high-magnitude quake that experts say could strike at any time along the San Andreas fault. But there's no reason to believe that this recent swarm of earthquakes could cause instability in San Andreas fault, or that it could trigger The Big One.
#2
I know she's high or drunk a lot of the time but Wonder Hussy does live in Death Valley, makes 2 or more videos a week about what's happening in Death Valley and makes no mention of noticing earthquakes. I know that booze and dope might cause one to not notice a real lurch but...
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Police detected a pulse on homeless man Jordan Neely
...the homeless schizophrenic who had 40 prior arrests including for violent attacks, and was loudly working himself up to attack riders in that subway car — in part because of the overly interesting drugs in his bloodstream — when Mr. Penny interrupted...
after he was put in a chokehold by Marine veteran Daniel Penny, bombshell new bodycam footage reveals.
The video became public today as Penny's manslaughter trial began in Manhattan.
Penny, then 24, is accused of killing Neely by putting him in what prosecutors say was a fatal chokehold. The May 1st 2023 incident sparked uproar in America - BLM says it was the racist killing of a mentally ill black man by an overzealous white military faithful. Others say Penny is a hero, a modern-day batman who stepped in when Neely made aggressive threats on the subway, including to a toddler boy whose mother shielded him with a stroller.
During opening statements today, bodycam footage of the moment cops found Neely was shown.
NYPD officers arrived on the train at Fulton Station at 2.33pm. Two police officers confirmed that Neely still had a pulse when they arrived.
'I got a pulse,' one said. A second police officer confirmed that he too felt a pulse.
Neely was unconscious, lying on the subway car floor. When asked how Neely ended up there, Penny replied: 'I put him out.'
Despite initially detecting a pulse, they issued Narcan - the drug used to reverse opioid overdoses - to Neely - and started CPR at 2.38pm. Paramedics from Northwell Health arrived on the train at 2.48pm - 15 minutes after the police. At 3.13pm - almost 45 minutes after police first arrived - Neely was still on the train, by then surrounded by paramedics. The bodycam released by the court today ends then.
He was not pronounced dead until he arrived at Lenox Health Hospital in Greenwich Village later that afternoon.
Among witnesses on the first day of evidence was an NYPD Sergeant who testified that none of his team performed mouth-to-mouth on Neely because he was a 'drug user'.
'He seemed to be a drug user.. he was an apparent drug user. He was very dirty. I didn’t want them to get… hepatitis.
'If he did wake up he would have been vomiting. I didn’t want my officers to do that.
'He was filthy. He looked like a homeless individual. You have to protect your officer,
'I wouldn’t want my officer to get sick if the person throws up,' he said.
'He quite literally, went for the jugular,' Assistant District Attorney Dafna Yoran said.
The prosecution accepted that Neely had been 'menacing' passengers on the train. But she said the entire exchange, from the time Neely got on the train, to the time the doors opened at the next station, lasted just 30 seconds. It was Penny’s choice to keep Neely restrained for a further five minutes and 53 seconds that formed the basis of the state’s case.
Yoran told jurors that another man who helped to get Neely to the ground repeatedly told Penny that he could let go because he had a strong grip of his arms.
‘The defendant has specialized training in chokeholds. A person passes out and you have to immediately let go… a green belt Marine is taught, and clearly knows.
‘He pushed Mr Neely to the point of no return, certain to die. When he did let go, he left Neely on the floor and didn’t look back. He picked up his hat, dusted himself off, and stood over his body.’
Yoran said Penny’s defense that he was acting to protect other, vulnerable passengers on the train can’t be considered beyond the point that all the passengers had fled the train.
Two stayed with him, helping to restrain the crazy guy, until police officers arrived, as it turns out.
‘[The level of force] may have been reasonable initially, [Neely’s behavior] would justify an initial use of force. But at the point that Penny killed Mr Neely, there was no one to protect. At that point there was no excuse or justification for the deadly use of physical force.’
While the state intends to argue that Penny never let up the initial pressure he placed on Neely’s neck, the defense insists he made several attempts to loosen his grip, and that only had a light hold on Neely by the time he stopped fighting back.
‘This struggle did last five to six minutes. But Danny was not, and could not, have been squeezing his neck. We know that because if he was, Neely would have passed out in the first minute,’ Kenniff said.
Opening statements began on Friday after a grueling two-week process of selecting the 12-person jury.
An initial search was conducted of Neely’s body and jacket, which was nearby. No weapons were found, and the only possession he had at the time was a muffin stuffed into his jacket pocket.
Police initially felt a faint pulse, and a shot of Narcan was administered. Once the pulse disappeared, officers began performing CPR, and then issued another shot of Narcan. At no point did Neely regain consciousness.
Kenniff argued that Penny had only intended to intervene until police could come and take over.
‘Something that took way longer than expected,’ he said.
From the time police received the dispatch call, it took seven minutes for first responders to arrive. It was then another 10 minutes before emergency services arrived with a defibrillator and more resources.
‘Danny was desperately waiting for police to show up and help him the way he had helped other passengers on this train,’ Kenniff said.
The trial is expected to last up to six weeks, and will call upon medical experts, first responders, and other passengers who were on the train that day.
Kenniff said that Penny was pleading with fellow passengers to call police and that he kept holding Neely because the man periodically flailed or tried to get up.
That doesn’t sound like indifference to me. Not even manslaughter-level indifference.
Related: The GiveSendGo fund for Mr. Penny’s legal expenses is still active here.
[Breitbart] A migrant drug pusher reportedly avoided deportation from Britannia after arguing that his removal would cause mental health issues for his mother.
UK Home Office efforts to remove convicted Portuguese robber and drug pusher Fabio Indiai from the country were stymied after the migrant’s lawyers convinced a judge that being deported would breach his rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the Daily Mail reported.
A judge found that the provision, which guarantees the "right to respect for private and family life", would have been breached by removing Indiai because it would negatively impact the mental health of his mother, to whom Indiai allegedly provides day-to-day support.
The Portuguese migrant was previously imprisoned in 2021 for intent to supply Class-A drugs after being arrested with over £1,000 of cocaine, ketamine, and MDMA.
I assume his mother survived that experience, which means she would survive being without him again. Or she could join him in exile — money goes a lot further in Portugal than in England.
Additionally, Indiai had also served 18 months in a youth prison for robbery in 2012. While the Home Office did not seek to deport him after the initial offence, the government department did seek to remove him from the country following the end of his sentence for drug dealing.
Commenting on the decision to allow him to remain in the country, Conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick said: "You can’t make it up. And you can’t defend it. We must leave the ECHR."
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] Supporters of former Bolivian President Evo Morales, who went out to protest, seized a military unit in Villa Tunari in the department of Cochabamba and took soldiers hostage. This was reported on November 1 by the Bolivia TV channel
The protesters demanded that the authorities stop interfering with them by stopping the operation to unblock the roads. The current president of the republic, Luis Arce, in turn, specified that Morales' supporters stormed three military facilities at once.
He noted that the authorities regard the seizure of military facilities as treason and an attack on the constitutional order. Arce added that the government will take measures aimed at restoring public order in the country. The press service of the Armed Forces of Bolivia stated that the participants in the seizure seized weapons.
Protesters in Bolivia began blocking roads 18 days ago to express their anger over rising food prices and fuel shortages.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, the Bolivian prosecutor's office is currently investigating Morales. He is suspected of corrupting a minor and human trafficking. There was also information that an arrest warrant was issued for the former president. Bolivian Deputy Minister of the Interior Roberto Rios denied this information.
On October 27, Morales released a video showing the moment when gunmen opened fire on his car. The former president claims that they were trying to detain him on orders from the government.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] In France, the original decree of Peter II, which disappeared from the Russian State Military Historical Archive (RGVIA), was sold at auction. The information was published on October 31 by the French auction house Aguttes.
The description of the lot on the auction house's website notes that the decree is very rare, since its author is the grandson of Emperor Peter the Great, Peter II, who did not rule for long, since he died early, at the age of 14.
The starting price for the document was €1–2 thousand; following the auction, the document was sold for €3,120 (approximately 330 thousand rubles).
As reported by the Izvestia publication, Vasilisa Denisova, deputy director of the Russian State Military Historical Archive, noted that the document on the "Decree of Emperor Peter II to the Military Collegium on the removal of Famentsyn from the post of commandant of St. Petersburg and the appointment of Prince G. A. Urusov in his place. September 9, 1727" turned out to be a dummy. It is not yet known when the document was replaced.
An investigation into the theft of the original is currently underway.
Earlier, Regnum News Agency reported that the first Russian auction of contemporary art VLADEY announced the sale of one of the famous works by the leader of the rock band Kino, Viktor Tsoi. The unusual painting was sold for a record amount of 76,900 euros.
[GEO.TV] Top Chinese research institutions linked to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) have used Meta's publicly available Llama model to develop an AI tool for potential military applications, according to academic papers and analysts.
In a June paper reviewed by Rooters, six Chinese researchers from three institutions, including two under the PLA's leading research body, the Academy of Military Science (AMS), detailed how they had used an early version of Meta's Llama as a base for what it calls "ChatBIT".
The researchers used the Llama 2 13B large language model (LLM) that Meta released in February 2023, incorporating their own parameters to construct a military-focused AI tool to gather and process intelligence, and offer accurate and reliable information for operational decision-making.
ChatBIT was fine-tuned and "optimised for dialogue and question-answering tasks in the military field", the paper said. It was found to outperform some other AI models that were roughly 90% as capable as OpenAI's powerful ChatGPT-4.
The researchers didn't elaborate on how they defined performance or specify whether the AI model had been put into service.
"It's the first time there has been substantial evidence that PLA military experts in China have been systematically researching and trying to leverage the power of open-source LLMs, especially those of Meta, for military purposes," said Sunny Cheung, associate fellow at the Jamestown Foundation who specialises in China's emerging and dual-use technologies including AI.
Meta has embraced the open release of many of its AI models, including Llama. It imposes restrictions on their use, including a requirement that services with more than 700 million users seek a license from the company.
Its terms also prohibit use of the models for "military, warfare, nuclear industries or applications, espionage" and other activities subject to US defence export controls, as well as for the development of weapons and content intended to "incite and promote violence".
However,
some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go... because Meta's models are public, the company has limited ways of enforcing those provisions.
In response to Rooters questions, Meta cited its acceptable use policy and said it took measures to prevent misuse.
"Any use of our models by the People's Liberation Army is unauthorized and contrary to our acceptable use policy," Molly Montgomery, Meta's director of public policy, told Rooters in a phone interview.
The Chinese researchers include Geng Guotong and Li Weiwei with the AMS's Military Science Information Research Center and the National Innovation Institute of Defense Technology, as well as researchers from the Beijing Institute of Technology and Minzu University.
"In the future, through technological refinement, ChatBIT will not only be applied to intelligence analysis, but also... strategic planning, simulation training and command decision-making will be explored," the paper said.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/02/2024 00:00 ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The amount of claims filed by 17 Russian TV channels against Google for 2 undecillion rubles (10 to the power of 36) or $20 decillion (2×10 to the power of 36) for blocking their accounts on the YouTube platform exceeds all the wealth accumulated in the world. This was reported on November 1 by The Washington Post (WP).
The publication cited data from The Boston Consulting Group, which estimated the world's total wealth at $477 trillion. According to the World Bank, global GDP in 2023 was about $105.4 trillion.
"In the case of verbal symmetry, the penalty could soon reach a googol - a one followed by 100 zeros - the mathematical term that inspired the name of the search engine," the publication's article says.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on October 29 it became known that a Russian court recognized the claims of 17 Russian TV channels against Google as legitimate and ruled that the company must pay 2 undecillion rubles. If the platform does not comply with this decision within nine months, the amount will increase by 100 thousand rubles every week.
Lawyer and IT specialist Igor Baranov explained in an interview with IA Regnum that such a large amount of claims against Google was made up of the amount of lawsuits and fines issued to the company. The expert also doubts that there are real levers for collecting funds from the corporation, since it has not registered a legal entity in Russia.
Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the size of the demands to Google, called it symbolic. Such a sum should become a reason for the organization to pay attention to the problem. The best option would be if the company corrected the situation with blocking Russian TV channels, the Kremlin representative added.
Google Corporation continues to ignore the legal demands of Russian courts, and at the moment the amount of fines is calculated in undecillions, but this is not the limit, said lawyer and IT specialist Igor Baranov in a conversation with Regnum News Agency. However, if the American company participates in the trial, the number of zeros in the final debt may be reduced, the expert believes.
The total amount of claims by 17 Russian TV channels against the American corporation Google has reached two undecillion rubles (₽2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). During the court hearing, which took place on Monday, October 28, the judge noted that he was considering “a case in which there are many, many zeros.”
Baranov said that the amount of the claim is made up of the demands of specific organizations that believe that their rights have been violated, and very large fines. It is the fines that contribute to the increase of this amount multiple times, the specialist emphasized.
"I'm not sure that there are real levers for collecting money now, given that Google has never registered a legal entity in the Russian Federation. But if the company fails to comply with the court's decision, the fine may be indexed. But we can only guess how much it will reach," the expert shared his opinion.
According to the lawyer, if the corporation decides to participate in the trial, the amount of debt can be appealed in some way. It will not be possible to appeal the fines in their pure form, but if the company wants to comply with this court decision and pay the fines that were assessed, then theoretically the possibility of reducing the amount could be present, Baranov believes.
"But if the corporation's legal entity were present on the territory of the Russian Federation, then we could talk about malicious failure to comply with the court's decision. In such a case, all legal forces that the legal authority has are used to collect funds, especially if the company has at least some financial capacity. Potentially, it would even be possible to look at the criminal component in this case," the specialist summed up.
Regnum News Agency reported that on October 4, a Moscow court ordered Google to unblock 27 YouTube resources of the international TV channel RT. In May 2022, the court registered RT's claim and seized the property of Google LLC for a total of 500 million rubles. And then it was reported that in the event of failure to comply with the court decision, the company would pay a penalty of 100 thousand rubles daily until the actual execution of the court decision. In addition, the penalty will double every week.
It was previously reported that Russian courts had repeatedly fined Google for systematically failing to remove information prohibited for distribution in Russia and knowingly false data about a special military operation. Thus, at the end of September, the Tagansky District Court of Moscow found the American corporation guilty of committing an administrative offense under Part 2 of Article 13.41 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation ("Failure of a website owner to remove information if the obligation to remove such information is provided for by Russian legislation") and imposed a fine of 3.5 million rubles.
[GEO.TV] OpenAI has beefed up its ChatGPT generative AI chatbot with search engine capabilities, as the startup takes on Google's decades-long dominance of web search.
The upgrade enables users to receive "fast, timely answers" with links to relevant web sources — information that previously required using a traditional search engine, the company said.
The significant upgrade to ChatGPT enables the AI chatbot to provide real-time information from across the web.
ChatGPT's homepage can now also offer direct tabs to sourced material on topics ranging from weather forecasts and stock prices to sports scores and breaking news, the company said.
These would link to news and data from providers that have signed content deals with OpenAI, including La Belle France's Le Monde, Germany's Axel Springer and the United Kingdom's Financial Times.
Examples of the new interface shown on the OpenAI website closely resembled search results on Google and Google Maps, though without the clutter of advertising.
Rather than launching a separate product, OpenAI has integrated search directly into ChatGPT for paying subscribers, though this will be expanded to users that use the free version of the chatbot.
Users can enable the search feature by default or activate it manually via a web search icon.
The company added that any website or publisher can opt-in to appear in ChatGPT's search results, with OpenAI actively seeking feedback from content creators to refine the system further.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote Thursday on X that search is his "favorite feature we have launched" on ChatGPT since the bot's debut in 2022.
"I find it to be a way faster/easier way to get the information I'm looking for," Altman added on Reddit.
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[BBC] "We're at the mercy of Google." Undecided voters in the US who turn to Google may see dramatically different views of the world – even when they're asking the exact same question.
Type in "Is Kamala Harris a good Democratic candidate", and Google paints a rosy picture. Search results are constantly changing, but last week, the first link was a Pew Research Center poll showing that "Harris energises Democrats". Next is an Associated Press article titled "Majority of Democrats think Kamala Harris would make a good president", and the following links were similar. But if you've been hearing negative things about Harris, you might ask if she's a "bad" Democratic candidate instead. Fundamentally, that's an identical question, but Google's results are far more pessimistic.
"It's been easy to forget how bad Kamala Harris is," said an article from Reason Magazine in the top spot. Then the US News & World Report offered positive spin about how Harris isn't "the worst thing that could happen to America", but the following results are all critical. A piece from Al Jazeera explained "Why I am not voting for Kamala Harris", followed by an endless Reddit thread on why she's no good.
You can see the same dichotomy with questions about Donald Trump, conspiracy theories, contentious political debates and even medical information. Some experts say Google is just parroting your own beliefs right back to you. It may be worsening your own biases and deepening societal divides along the way.
"We're at the mercy of Google when it comes to what information we're able to find," says Varol Kayhan, an associate professor of information systems at the University of South Florida in the US.
THE BIAS MACHINE
"Google's whole mission is to give people the information that they want, but sometimes the information that people think they want isn't actually the most useful," says Sarah Presch, digital marketing director at Dragon Metrics, a platform that helps companies tune their websites for better recognition from Google using methods known as "search engine optimisation" or SEO.
It's a job that calls for meticulous combing through Google results, and a few years ago, Presch noticed a problem. "I started looking at how Google handles topics where there's heated debate," she says. "In a lot of cases, the results were shocking."
Some of the starkest examples looked at how Google treats certain health questions. Google often pulls information from the web and shows it at the top of results to provide a quick answer, which it calls a Featured Snippet. Presch searched for "link between coffee and hypertension". The Featured Snippet quoted an article from the Mayo Clinic, highlighting the words "Caffeine may cause a short, but dramatic increase in your blood pressure." But when she looked up "no link between coffee and hypertension", the Featured Snippet cited a contradictory line from the very same Mayo Clinic article: "Caffeine doesn't have a long-term effect on blood pressure and is not linked with a higher risk of high blood pressure".
The same thing happened when Presch searched for "is ADHD caused by sugar" and "ADHD not caused by sugar". Google pulled up Featured Snippets that argue support both sides of the question, again taken from the same article. (In reality, there's little evidence that sugar affects ADHD symptoms, and it certainly doesn't cause the disorder.)
She encountered the same issue with political questions. Ask "is the British tax system fair", and Google cites a quote from Conservative MP Nigel Huddleston, arguing that indeed it is. Ask "is the British tax system unfair", and Google's Featured Snippet explains how UK taxes benefit the rich and promote inequality.
"What Google has done is they've pulled bits out of the text based on what people are searching for and fed them what they want to read," Presch says. "It's one big bias machine."
For its part, Google says it provides users unbiased results that simply match people with the kind of information they’re looking for. "As a search engine, Google aims to surface high-quality results that are relevant to the query you entered," a Google spokesperson says. "We provide open access to a range of viewpoints from across the web, and we give people helpful tools to evaluate the information and sources they find."
WHEN THE FILTER BUBBLE POPS
By one estimate, Google handles some 6.3 million queries every second, totaling more nine billion searches a day. The vast majority of internet traffic begins with a Google Search, and people rarely click on anything beyond the first five links – let alone venturing onto the second page. One study that tracked users' eye movements found people often don't even look at anything past the top results. The system that orders the links on Google Search has colossal power over our experience of the world.
According to Google, the company is handling this responsibility well. "Independent academic research has refuted the idea that Google Search is pushing people into filter bubbles," the spokesperson says.
The question of so-called "filter bubbles" and "echo chambers" on the internet is a hot topic, though some research has questioned whether the effects of online echo chambers have been overstated.
But Kayhan – who has studied how search engines affect confirmation bias, the natural impulse to seek information that confirms your beliefs – says there's no question that our beliefs and even our own political identities are swayed by the systems that control what we see online. "We're dramatically influenced by how we receive information," he says.
Google's spokesperson says a 2023 study which concluded that people's exposure to partisan news is due more to the fact that that's what they click on, rather than Google serving up partisan news in the first place. In one sense, that's how confirmation bias works: people look for evidence that supports their views and ignore evidence that challenges them. But even in that study, the researchers said their findings do not imply that Google's algorithms are unproblematic. "In some cases, our participants were exposed to highly partisan and unreliable news on Google Search," the researchers said, "and past work suggests that even a limited number of such exposures can have substantial negative impacts".
Regardless, you might choose to engage with information that keeps you trapped in your filter bubble, "but there's only a certain bouquet of messages that are put in front of you to choose from in the first place", says Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, a professor of mediated communication at Technische Universität Berlin in Germany. "The algorithms play a substantial role in this problem."
Google did not respond to the BBC's question whether there's a person or a team who's specifically tasked with addressing the problem of confirmation bias.
'WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND DOCUMENTS – WE FAKE IT'
"In my opinion, this whole issue stems from the technical limitations of search engines, and the fact that people don't understand what those limitations are," says Mark Williams-Cook, founder of AlsoAsked, another search engine optimisation tool that analyses Google results.
A recent US anti-trust case against Google uncovered internal company documents where employees discuss some of the techniques the search engine uses to answer your questions. "We do not understand documents – we fake it," an engineer wrote in a slideshow used during a 2016 presentation at the company. "A billion times a day, people ask us to find documents relevant to a query… Beyond some basic stuff, we hardly look at documents. We look at people. If a document gets a positive reaction, we figure it is good. If the reaction is negative, it is probably bad. Grossly simplified, this is the source of Google's magic."
"That is how we serve the next person, keep the induction rolling, and sustain the illusion that we understand."
In other words, Google watches to see what people click on when they enter a given search term. When people seem satisfied by a certain type of information, it's more likely that Google will promote that kind of search result for similar queries in the future.
A Google spokesperson says these documents are outdated, and the system used to decipher queries and web pages has become far more sophisticated.
With billions of searches passing through its system every day, Google has a massive influence over what information people are exposed to (Credit: Serenity Strull/ BBC)
"That presentation is from 2016, so you have to take it with a pinch of salt, but the underlying concept is still true. Google builds models to try and predict what people like, but the problem is this creates a kind of feedback loop," Williams-Cook says. If confirmation bias pushes people to click on links that reinforce their beliefs, it can teach Google to show people links that lead to confirmation bias. "It's like saying you're going to let your kid pick out their diet based on what they like. They'll just end up with junk food," he says.
Williams-Cook also worries that people may not understand that when you ask something like "is Trump a good candidate", Google may not necessarily interpret that as a question. Instead, it often just pulls up documents that relate to keywords like "Trump" and "good candidate".
It gives people mistaken expectations about what they're going to get when they're searching, and that can push people to misinterpret what the search results mean, he says.
If users were more clear on the search engine's shortcomings, Williams-Cook believes they might think about the content they see more critically. "Google should do more to inform the public about how Search actually works. But I don't think they will, because to do that you have to admit some imperfections about what's not working," he says. (To learn more about the inner workings of search engines, read this article about how Google's updates to its algorithm are changing the internet.)
Google is open about the fact that Search is never a solved problem, a company spokesperson says, and the company works tirelessly to address the deep technical challenges in the field as they crop up. Google also points to features it offers that help users evaluate information, such as the "About this result" tool and notices that let users know when results about a topic related to breaking news are changing quickly.
And then there are the philosophical questions, explored at the link.
[LegalInsurrection] Recent reports indicate that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its Russian counterpart Roscosmos are facing serious safety concerns on the International Space Station (ISS), potentially leading to preparations for an emergency evacuation.
NASA’s astronauts aboard the International Space Station have been told to prepare for an urgent evacuation amid growing safety concerns.
The US space agency and its Russian counterpart, Roscomos, are tracking 50 ’areas of concern’ related to a growing leak aboard the station.
NASA is now calling the cracks in a Russian service module a ’top safety risk’ — escalating the threat rating to five out of five.
Astronauts have been warned to stay in the American section when the module is open so they can be close to their spacecraft in case of an emergency evacuation.
The most pressing issue is an ongoing air leak in the Zvezda Service Module in the Russian portion of the station, which has been tracked for the past five years.
The leaks’ exact cause is not known, nor is it clear exactly where the air is leaving the space station. Both space agencies have narrowed their focus to internal and external welds that may have deteriorated, according to the inspector general.
The U.S. space agency has been working closely with Roscosmos to identify the source of the leaks and ensure crew safety, Free said. Since the last round of patches over the summer, "the leakage rate has gone down," he said.
"We’ve asked them to minimize how long that hatch is open, and they are minimizing it," Free said. "We’ve come to a compromise that they close it in the evening."
NASA has determined the station remains safe enough for the 11 people aboard. Still, the agency decided its astronauts need more options in the event that a rapid departure from the space station becomes necessary.
#4
How about do a space walk with a bunch of soapy water and just spray don the whole service module with it and look for bubbles. Just like you do a leaking tire. It's a simple test.
#5
If worse comes to worse which it most always does, can't they just open the door and jump? I mean, it's downhill all the way gravitationally speaking.
Lands Starship Trooper like in The Gods Must Be Crazy.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] On the night of November 1, four powerful flares occurred on the Sun, the Institute of Applied Geophysics (IPG) reported.
One of the flares was close to the highest class X.
“On November 1 at 00:54 Moscow time, an M9.5 flare lasting 55 minutes was recorded in the X-ray range in the sunspot group 3878 (N15E26),” the IPG reported.
In turn, the X-ray Astronomy Laboratory of the Sun of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences recalled that region 3878, during its last passage across the disk, produced a magnetic storm of level G4.66 on October 11, 2024.
"The storm was the second most powerful in the entire 25th solar cycle. The maximum radiation of the flare was recorded near the Earth's orbit at 00:20 Moscow time. Based on the results of measuring the X-ray flux, the event was assigned the score X2.0," the laboratory reported.
Scientists noted that the X2.0 event "does not look threatening," but the "reputation" of 3878, which on October 11 "managed to squeeze out the second most powerful magnetic storm in seven years from an X1.8 flare," is alarming.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, on October 9, a level X flare occurred on the Sun. It caused a plasma ejection towards the Earth and a magnetic storm. As scientists noted, the plasma was ejected exactly along the Sun-Earth line, the geometric dimensions of the ejection exceeded possible calculation errors.
A plasma cloud with a speed of about 600 km/s and a temperature of about 700 thousand degrees reached the Earth on October 28. Two active spots 3842 and 3848 are located on the side of the Sun visible from Earth. They caused powerful magnetic storms at the beginning of the month.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The 53-hectare Mesyatsev Island, which was part of the Franz Josef Land archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, has disappeared. This was reported by the Russian Geographical Society.
The organization's website notes that the island melted as a result of global warming. As Alexey Kucheiko, associate professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute, who supervised the discovery using satellite images, explained, navigation maps will have to be corrected as a result of this event.
It is specified that in 2015 the island could be seen on maps, but by August 2024 its area had decreased from 53 hectares to three hectares, and a month later it had completely disappeared. As the researchers suggest, another factor in the disappearance of the island was the erosion of the coastline, which was caused by rising sea levels.
As reported by the Regnum news agency, earlier on October 1, the Bloomberg agency, citing the World Weather Attribution (WWA) organization, wrote that the recent powerful flooding in Spain was caused by global warming. It was noted that the experts' analysis showed that precipitation in Spain was approximately 12% stronger, and its probability was twice as high as in the pre-industrial climate.
Leading researcher at the Pushchino Scientific Center for Biological Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, climatologist and biophysicist Alexey Karnaukhov said that due to global warming, the weather in St. Petersburg could change dramatically. According to him, if such events develop, the climate in the Northern capital will be colder than in Greenland.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[APNEWS] A Washington state man accused of leading a wildlife trafficking ring on a Native American reservation that killed thousands of eagles and hawks to sell on the black market was sentenced Thursday to nearly four years in prison.
A migrant 
[LegalInsurrection] Recent reports indicate that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its Russian counterpart Roscosmos are facing serious safety concerns on the 
